Re: st: RE: 64-bit Windows OS advice

Hi,
XP Server 64, 8 CPUs / 16g with ~3 users running multiple
applications 24/7. Works fine.
Note that (all?) 64 bit OSs are unlikely to support 16-bit Windows
applications (i.e. Windows 3.11 and earlier programs).
Check this and google for other references if it matters:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896458
You are probably not going to install a 16- or 32-bit Stata there
anyways. Otherwise there should be no difference for a 64bit OS.
[BTW: Which Stata was first 32-bit Stata? Which was the last DOS-only Stata?]
Most quotes regarding "slower" performance often boil down to
"semitransparent windows not sliding smoothly when my font smoothing
is set to reflect the light shading of my textures simulation
renderer..." As if anyone cared! Stas mentioned some things (like
update agents, etc) that you might want to shut down or reconfigure.
In most cases it makes no sense to compare out-of-the-box OS
performance, because with a few clicks you can change that.It is up to
you how much time you want to invest into this process.
Since most of Stata's binary code is written in C (and binary code is
not the most of the code, as Bill Gould stressed Mata is becoming more
important) and it's specifically written to be movable across
platforms, there will be few if any code which would be sensible to
your OS version (WinXP or Vista).
Best regards,
Sergiy Radyakin
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Stas Kolenikov <skolenik@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rich,
>
> Stata will run no matter what, that's not a terribly sophisticated
> software in terms of using some weird internal architecture and odd
> drivers and unstable OS code and such. I have a Vista workstation with
> Stata being pretty much the only application constantly running; it is
> only a simulation platform, and I am happy with that as is -- I turn
> the screen on for ten minutes, start a new thread, copy the data down,
> and I am done. However if I had to do some real work and install and
> run a bunch of applications (at any given time, I rarely have fewer
> than ten applications running -- Stata, a browser, a mail client, a
> file manager, text editor, Acrobat, etc., plus all the crap Windows
> puts in, plus all those update agents sitting in the background, and
> Bill Gates only knows what else), I'd most likely hate it: it is
> absolutely paranoid about security, and Stata Corp. had to change
> their help files extensions because of that: you cannot really copy
> .hlp files under Vista since it thinks those are Windows help files,
> and the latter are known to have security issues (or at least Vista
> believes those are dangerous... go figure).
>
> It is prohibitively difficult these days to get an XP machine though;
> everything comes with Vista unless you install XP from your own
> distribution disks.
>
> Linux is generally lighter than Windows; it will not consume as much
> resources as Windows does, so you will have the feeling of the
> applications running "faster" (although it is a matter of interaction
> between the OS and the application rather than the processing power of
> the machine itself). The only reason I got Vista for my simulation
> platform is because the Linux support is close to non-existent in our
> department/college of A&S, and since I only have one application
> running I am not expecting Vista to crash (and it didn't). If most of
> your other applications are strictly Windows based then there is
> probably no point in getting Linux.
>
> --
> Stas Kolenikov, also found at http://stas.kolenikov.name
> Small print: I use this email account for mailing lists only.
> *
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>
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